I have always been fascinated by the myth of the Western frontier and one of its greatest mysteries the commercial manipulation of the story of western expansion: historical episodes in which human nature appeared at its worst provided novelists and filmmakers with the material for escapist fantasies. As a construct of the imagination our creation of the West is exceptional.. Debunking the myth by showing its historical inaccuracies, the so called New West histories has not achieved much because the ultimate defence of all myth is to argue that it is true – if not literally, then in some transcendental sense.